You’ve Canceled the Wedding, Now the Aftermath

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CreditJessica Hische

By Amy Sohn

May 19, 2016

The only rite of passage more stressful than wedding planning may be canceling a wedding. When a couple decides to break up after the invitations have been sent, the space has been reserved and the honeymoon booked, they face two tasks that can be as horrifying as ending the relationship itself: telling the guests and trying to recoup cash.

Stacey Becker, a Manhattan lawyer, now 39, had been dating her boyfriend for about two years, and living with him for three months, when he proposed. The November before their August 2007 wedding date, they argued about Thanksgiving travel plans. He wanted her to go to California to visit his parents, but she had had an operation and could not travel.

Even though his parents had already planned to fly to New York and to see Ms. Becker, he said he was homesick for California. Then, Ms. Becker said, he told her, “‘Well, maybe I’m not ready to be married.’”

“My whole body had adrenaline running through it,” said Ms. Becker, who wrote a book called “Knot the One: Why Getting Dumped Before My Wedding Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.”

“He had not indicated up until that point that he wasn’t interested in getting married,” she said. He quickly backtracked, she said, telling her he was having a bad day.

But the next month, he left for a business trip and came back saying he was still confused. Friends and family members urged her to get out of the relationship. Instead, they decided to stay together, but to postpone the wedding.

Wedding-bell jitters have long been material for Hollywood: the runaway bride in “The Graduate” or the instantly regretful groom in “The Heartbreak Kid.” But while cancelers of the past had doubts about their partners, today’s millennials focus on the symbolism of marriage.

“A lot of my clients grapple with the transition to adulthood when they get engaged,” said Christina Curtis, a New York City psychotherapist who was one of the creators of a premarital-coaching practice, Brooklyn Premarital, this year.

“A pending marriage brings up issues of personal identity, a re-examination of dreams you had for yourself, and ideas you have about the kind of person you are,” Ms. Curtis said. “It distills your life. And because millennials feel like marriage is more optional, they’re really examining whether it’s the right choice.”

A 2013 study by The Wedding Report found that 13 percent of engagements (about a quarter-million) don’t end in marriage. And yet even though many people may know someone who has had broken it off before the wedding, they don’t necessarily think it can happen to them. When it does, it’s often too late to get money back.

When Ms. Becker canceled, her parents called most of the guests. “I told a few of my immediate best friends,” she said, “and they let the word trickle out.”

Her father got the deposit back from the Hilton Westchester in Rye Brook, N.Y. The videographer and photographer also returned deposits. Ms. Becker’s ex-fiancé recouped the Hawaii honeymoon fees (less a transaction fee) because it was booked with travel miles.

They canceled their Crate & Barrel and Macy’s registries and returned the gifts they had received. She wrote checks to those who had given her money at their engagement party (but no one cashed them).

Not every vendor was cooperative; her mother could not get back the dress deposit from Kleinfeld Bridal. Months later, when the dress came in, the store called to schedule a fitting, and Ms. Becker reminded it that she was not getting married. When the shop where the bridesmaids dresses were purchased also refused to return deposit money, Ms. Becker reimbursed her attendants.

Though she had learned about contracts in law school, Ms. Becker had signed a very bad one with the band. It included an acceleration clause, meaning the balance came due at the time of a breach. She pleaded with the band manager. “He told me, ‘I hope this will never happen to my daughter,’” she said, “and he said he would make an exception.” They lost only the deposit.

The 90-day mark is a crucial turning point; that’s when many reception spaces and wedding planners require 50 percent of their fees. A San Diego-based planner, Courtney Tibbets, had a couple cancel 91 days before the wedding. “It was clear that they looked at their contract,” she said, “and calculated that they couldn’t wait any longer.”

Eve Sturges, 36, a therapist and writer in Los Angeles, canceled her wedding eight weeks before the date. She and her fiancé were to marry on their daughter’s first birthday in Petaluma, Calif., before 150 guests. But they began to argue over whether to have more children; she wanted to, and he didn’t. When he suggested they postpone, she was relieved.

She gave her parents a list of all of the vendors and guests. “You have to have family or social support when you’re dealing with hard emotions,” she said. The photographer and the florist allowed them to turn their deposits into a credits. “We sent flowers to people for a year with our $500 floral nonrefundable deposit,” she said, and they used the photographer credit for family photos.

To notify the guests, her mother sent handwritten postcards that read: “The wedding of Eve and Jim is postponed indefinitely. Thank you for your love and support.” Ms. Sturges was happy with the wording. “Somebody else I know canceled a wedding, and they sent a postcard that described the wedding as ‘not happening.’ That felt more loaded to me.”

Eventually they decided to break up. Ms. Sturges consigned her wedding dress. She used the leftover ribbon and vellum for birthday-party invitations. The parents kept the wine, and the family depleted it over several years.

Though a canceled wedding has always been a social embarrassment, today’s weddings are often very public affairs, from the engagement through the honeymoon. Couples announce their engagement on social media and chronicle their reception-space booking, band hiring and hotel selection on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat and their own wedding websites. Because of the voyeurism, guests can feel a right to know the cancellation back story.

Tina Weber, 28, a video producer who lives in Union City, N.J., had announced her 2009 engagement on Facebook, soon after it offered the option to list life events. After she decided to cancel, her mother sent out cards to guests, but Ms. Weber heard little response until the day she changed her Facebook relationship status from “engaged” to “single.” “I got all these ‘likes,’ comments and messages,” she said. “Some guests wanted to know the reason.”

But a bombshell announcement can also lead to interesting conversations. Ms. Sturges’s boss at the time told her that many years earlier, she had annulled her marriage two days after the wedding. And Ms. Weber received an email from a high school friend who had learned of the broken engagement on Facebook. “She said she was in the same situation,” Ms. Weber said, “and was looking for words of support and advice.”

She added, “She wanted to hear how I did it.”

While friends and families may be shocked, wedding planners usually take cancellations in stride. Ms. Tibbets, the wedding planner, said: “Brides will tell me in one-on-one meetings: ‘I’m freaking out. Is this just wedding jitters?’ Or else they start crying.”

Ms. Tibbets has had nine cancellations in eight years in business. Couples seldom share the reason, though two brides cited infidelity. The only time Ms. Tibbets has made an exception to her refund policy (she requires a nonrefundable retainer ranging from $500 to $3,000 to secure a date) was when a military groom had to deploy.

Though wedding insurance can cover unforeseen events like deployment, weather events and the closing of the reception space, only Wedsure, based in Toluca Lake, Calif., offers “change of heart” as an add-on to its cancellation-postponement insurance. The coverage is extremely narrow: The wedding must be canceled at least 365 days before the date, and only an “innocent party financier,” such as a parent, can make a claim, not a bride or groom.

Wedsure’s owner, Rob Nuccio, said the policy is narrow because of past misuse, “or, as you might call it, fraud.”

“When we started covering it in 2007,” he said, “we offered it up to 120 days before the wedding, and we were getting claims from mothers of the bride who bought the insurance because they knew in advance that there was a problem.”

In the ensuing years, Wedsure increased the minimum to 180, 270 and, finally, 365 days. “One woman canceled because her fiancé was having an affair with her bridesmaid,” Mr. Nuccio said. “It wasn’t covered. If the hotel had burned down, it would have been another story.”

When a wedding is canceled close enough to the date that it has been paid for in full, (for many that’s a figure in the $20,000-$30,000 range, or more) what are families to do? There is a website, CanceledWeddings.com, which allows registered users to buy or sell discounted weddings or honeymoons. Or, others have looked to charity. Last year, the parents of a lovelorn former bride-to-be in Sacramento decided to hold a free party for the homeless; the bride did not attend. This month, The New York Post reported that Yiru Sun gave a party for underprivileged children on what was to be her wedding day, at a fancy event space on the Upper East Side. The wedding had been canceled after she refused to sign a prenuptial agreement, and she could not recoup the $8,000 deposit.

When it’s over, for some there is the worry that a canceled wedding can signal commitment-phobia to future paramours.

On the date of her own canceled wedding, Ms. Becker, who eventually broke up with her fiancé, had been invited to a wedding of a summer-camp friend. She didn’t want to go because she was so emotional about the date, but another friend, who had recently gone through his own breakup, persuaded her that they should go together. He is now her husband and the father to their 2-year-old son.

Ms. Weber met Mike Carmelich, who is now her husband, at a party a few weeks after her canceled wedding. After taking the relationship extremely slowly, they became engaged. She logged onto Macys.com to start her registry and got the message, “Congratulations, Tina and Johnny!” She typed in Mr. Carmelich’s name, changed the date and began to pick new items.

For the wedding itself, in April 2015, she wore her unworn and nonreturnable Kleinfeld dress. It still fit. When she asked Mr. Carmelich if he minded, he said: “ ‘Who cares? You never took it out of the box.’ ”